But it gets better, after whole incident, Right Sector as a show of force surrounded Kiev with armed camps controlling traffic to and from capital, plus bombed a few police stations:Ukraine government in armed standoff with nationalist militia
Government forces barricade bases of Right Sector, which has helped it battle pro-Russian forces, after gunfight reportedly killed two people
Ukrainian servicemen guard entrance to the western city of Mukacheve, after fighting between police and Right Sector fighters took place on Saturday.
Soldiers and police have been locked in a standoff with a nationalist militia in western Ukraine after a gun and grenade battle that left at least two dead.
Tensions have been rising between the government and the Right Sector militia that has helped it fight pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.
A Right Sector spokesman, Taras Kuzyak, told Ukrainian media on Sunday that seven infantry fighting vehicles had blocked the entrance to Right Sector’s base near the town of Skole in Lviv region, adding that law enforcement was similarly cutting off access to other Right Sector bases in western Ukraine.
A burning police car in Mukacheve on Saturday.
The move came after a gunfight broke out on Saturday, when about 20 Right Sector gunmen arrived at a sports complex controlled by MP Mikhail Lano. They had been trying to stop the traffic of cigarettes and other contraband, a spokesman for the group said.
Near the city of Mukacheve, the site of a fierce gun battle involving Right Sector fighters, private security guards and police on Saturday, Right Sector members were camped in the forest and did not plan to put down their weapons, spokesman Artem Skoropadsky said. It was previously reported that police had surrounded some gunmen in a wooded area and were attempting to negotiate their surrender.
Lano said a Right Sector commander had met him to ask his help in arranging sanatorium stays for men who had fought in eastern Ukraine, during which time an unknown man was shot outside. According to local medical staff, nine people were wounded, including three passersby, in addition to the fatalities.
A video published by journalist-turned-MP Mustafa Nayyem on Sunday shows Right Sector fighters firing Kalashnikov rifles and a heavy machine gun mounted on a pickup truck, apparently in the direction of police who had arrived on the scene. Another piece of footage shows a police car burning.
About 200 people rallied in support of Right Sector outside the presidential administration in Kiev, many of them in military uniforms.
Kiev has allowed nationalist groups including Right Sector to operate despite allegations by groups such as Amnesty International that Right Sector has tortured civilian prisoners.
Video of incident in question (military looking thugs with black-red flags are RS, black shirt men with blue-yellow flags on cars are police):Tensions rising in Ukraine as far-right militia’s boobytraps injure two police
Double bombing follows weekend shootout between Right Sector fighters and police as president attempts to crack down on armed nationalists
Life goes on in a village near Mukacheve as Ukrainian security forces search for militia fighters of the far-right militia Right Sector. At least two people were killed at the weekend.
Booby-trap explosions have injured two police officers in western Ukraine, further raising tensions in the region after a shootout with nationalists at the weekend left two men dead.
The continued violence in the area, which borders the European Union and is rife with smuggling, highlights Kiev’s struggles with both endemic corruption and armed nationalist groups who have helped it fight pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. On Monday Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, ordered the security services and police to disarm “illegal groups” and root out corruption and smuggling.
Two police officers in Lviv were taken to hospital on Tuesday after mysterious bombings that the interior ministry said were connected with “events in the Zakarpattia region”, referring to the shootout in the city of Mukacheve on Saturday that killed two men.
The gunfight began after police responded to the arrival of heavily armed Right Sector members at a sports complex controlled by an MP, Mikhail Lano, who openly opposes the group. Right Sector said its men had been trying to stop a smuggling operation, but others called it a fight over contraband.
Video footage showed Right Sector men shooting at a police car with Kalashnikov assault rifles and a heavy machine gun mounted on a pickup truck. The interior ministry said the far-right group had shot first.
The first blast in Lviv, which is north of Mukacheve, occurred at about 9am when a lieutenant opened a neighbourhood police station, setting off an explosion. The 24-year-old man was in hospital in critical condition with multiple shrapnel wounds to his head and body.
A second explosion went off about an hour later at another neighbourhood police station, injuring a 31-year-old female officer. The interior ministry said the station entrances had been booby-trapped and a safety clip from a grenade had been found at one site.
Security forces detained two members of Right Sector late on Monday who it said were involved in the Mukacheve shootout. After the gunfight, government forces had surrounded Right Sector members in a wooded area near Mukacheve as well as a base in the Lviv region.
Ukrainian far-right group claims to be co-ordinating violence in Kiev
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Right Sector grew in popularity after it played a lead role in the tumultuous mass protests that overthrew president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, and the group has joined other volunteer battalions, many of them also with far-right views, to fight pro-Russia rebels in the east.
Kiev has been cautiously trying to integrate these irregular units into the military. Its troops surrounded a Right Sector base in eastern Ukraine in April after it refused to be broken up among different military units. The military eventually appointed Right Sector’s leader, MP Dmytro Yarosh as an adviser to the chief of staff, Viktor Muzhenko, in an apparent compromise.
But Saturday’s clash showed that the process of subordinating Right Sector, which has claimed to have 10,000 fighters, is far from complete. On Monday, Poroshenko took armed groups to task without mentioning Right Sector by name.
“No political force should have, and will not have, any kind of armed cells. No political organisation has the right to establish … criminal groups,” he told Ukraine’s security council.
Poroshenko added that the flow of weapons from the conflict in the east had raised the risk of crime around the country. Right Sector and other volunteer battalions have been accused of criminal activity and human rights violations, including torture and kidnapping.
Speaking to the national security council on Monday, Poroshenko called for an investigation into everyone involved in the Mukacheve incident, which he blamed on the redirection of smuggling flows, and demanded “searches, arrests and direct criminal liability”.
“We must untangle the knot of old problems requiring an immediate solution. I am talking about clans, smuggling, corruption and so on,” Poroshenko said, according to his press service. “The picture of what is happening there now is not black and white, it is simply shockingly black.”
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s parliament created a temporary investigative commission to look into the circumstances of the Mukacheve conflict. Meanwhile, customs agents in Zakarpattia confiscated a cache of 2,000 cigarettes hidden in a rail wagon full of iron ore.
This is happening, by the way, on the opposite end of the Ukraine, in Western regions, 1500+ km from Donbas. And a little context, as I live in that area - what article calls "smuggling" is border trade conducted by 'ants' (people called so because they cross the border multiple times per day loaded with legal limits of alcohol, cigarettes, meat, cheese and electronics to exploit big price difference between Ukraine and EU).
It's main source of living for the whole of Western Ukraine as you can make month's wage in a week or two, and what Right Sector thugs tried to do was looting one of such organizations (unwilling to pay "voluntary" protection fee) of goods and money. It's not to say smuggling doesn't happen, but Polish customs crack down on that and using ants is much simpler and problem free.
By the way, Right Sector leader gloated on Ukrainian TV he shoot two "dogs" dead (as they call Ukrainian policemen) on Maidan year ago, before so called 'illegal' opening fire by police in return. There was not even a peep about that on Western media - maybe because questioning Maidan as totally and fully democratic process is forbidden, maybe because it makes everyone who criticized it look like naive idiot. But then again, they made SS flags flying, antisemitic neo-nazi band of thugs itching to kill and loot into organization consisting of two cute girls, so it's not like they cared about reporting facts or anything even back then.
